Changing
by SociallyInept
Summary: Evan wonders about how he got to where he is underground.


Yo. Evan belongs to Marvel/WB/whoeverthecrapelse. Not me. So I was in a real writing slump ever since the 7th HP book, which meant just writing random stuff and since I hadn't written anything from Evan's perspective, here ya go. Apologies for pseudo-intellectualism.

* * *

There are some things that I do very well. Skateboarding, basketball- at my old high school I was even in choir, but my friends up at the mansion never knew that. It'd be too awkward. I was a tenor. Something else that's really starting to be easy for me is fighting. The Danger Room training had been helpful, but living in the sewers with the Morlocks, training under Calypso- who's just about as easygoing as Logan, a.k.a. she isn't- has really tightened my technique. I can't turn my head too far because of the bony scales all over me, but I know how to listen, to smell for things out of place.

Yes, it is possible to smell things in a sewer that aren't sewer-related. I never would have thought possible, but then there are several things I never would have thought possible. Me being a mutant at all, for one. Me being an extremely obvious mutant. Me abandoning my friends and aunt out of self-loathing. Me only thinking of me. I'm pretty sure I've always been this way, but down in the tunnels, left to my own needs, thoughts echo pretty loudly and I noticed how repetitive they seemed to be getting.

Drinking that Pow-R8 had been my first mistake. Ironically, it had a really nice taste, right up until the pain hit. I'm not sure what happened after that, but whatever it was it wasn't good. I shoot spikes. That's never good, especially not in crowds. I got better though, in a way. At least, I stopped being sick and just became a little more of a freak than I already was. I'm okay with that now, being different. I mean, Kurt's been doing it for years and he doesn't run and hide whenever something bad happens. It took me awhile to realize that though. It's been months and only now am I beginning to question my decision to ditch the X-Men. I don't regret my time with the Morlocks, but I do regret leaving the X-Men. I needed a break, but I could have just told them that, couldn't I? And their piteous looks and super-nice treatment of me would have been okay to deal with. Wouldn't it?

I'm really not sure. I don't know a lot of things, and unlike the old Evan I can acknowledge that now. I get lonely down here a lot, even with the other Morlocks to keep me company. Sometimes at night I climb up to the street gutters and peek through and just watch people live their lives topside, and I wonder how they'd react if I were to walk down the street by them. Probably with fear, but I'm not sure. Not all of them. Not anymore.

A few days ago, I was watching a little girl play with a rubber ball in the street down by 3rd Street, and the ball rolled into the street drain where I was hiding. She ran over and saw me before I could hide, and I expected her to run and tell her mom or whoever that there was a monster in the gutter, and that they'd go and tell someone that living things were in the gutter, and they'd believe her because it could be mutants, and a massive genocide would occur…. But the girl tilted her head, making her hair fall to one side, and squatted down in front of me.

"What'cha doing?" she asked. I was still frozen for a second, but my mouth unfroze before my brain and answered her.

"Hiding."

"Why? Does something scare you?" she asked innocently. That girl couldn't have been more than five, and judging by her dress she was from a fairly high-income family. It was 3rd Street, after all. Mostly upper-middle class.

"I'm not scared," I responded, feeling extremely stupid talking from within a gutter. Calypso would have a cow if she saw me. "I just don't want other people to be."

"Why would they be scared of you? That sounds silly." The girl giggled sweetly, sitting on her knees with her head practically in the drain with me.

"You can't see me very well, can you?" I asked wryly. She didn't pick up on the emotion, and shook her head. "If you could see me you'd run away in fear."

"Can I see then?" she asked, reaching a hand into the gutter. I'm not sure what she was expecting. Maybe something out of Monsters, Inc. or something.

Even less explainable was why I slowly stuck my right arm out of the drain, into the light. My skin, what I could see of it, seemed lighter. I'd gotten used to the dim lighting of the tunnels. And my scales, which looked sinister in the dark, seemed…there. Not evil or good, but just part of my arm. The girl paused for a second, looking at my arm in the light, and then slowly reached out a pale arm of her own and gingerly touched me. Her face was blank for a moment, and then a small smile formed.

"That's not so bad," she said. A voice from above that I couldn't see from the gutter called out, and the girl answered for a second before facing me again.

"Mommy says it's dinnertime." She said apologetically.

"Hang on a sec," I said, jumping down from the ledge and digging around in the darkness. My eyes were having trouble adjusting after staring at the daylight for so long. I finally found her ball, and used part of my pants to wipe it more or less clean before climbing back up to the girl. "Here's your ball."

She took it from me without even hesitating at the two spiky arms holding it out, smiled, and ran off out of my sight.

Which is why the last two days I haven't done anything but think. And I'm beginning to think I don't want to spend the rest of my life in these tunnels. Maybe the Professor's dream isn't so crazy after all. Yeah, it'll take awhile to get to that point of peace that he talks about, and somehow I doubt that it'll be in my lifetime- or I'll be old and my scales would be flaky with age or something- but I'm beginning to think that despite what Calypso and the others think, we may be able to walk down the street without getting lynched eventually, even looking as different as I do.

So maybe when nightfall comes I'll go find a payphone and call up Auntie O. I think if I present it right, Calypso will let me go in her good graces. And maybe by tomorrow I'll be back among my friends in the mansion. Even though I still won't be able to go to school, or really go out in public at all, at least I'll be able to go outside during daylight, in the privacy of the mansion's grounds.

I wonder if anyone's changed. I know I have, in more ways than one.


End file.
